Tracks leading to the past

Tecate ceremony hails new life for renovated, historic train station

TECATE, MEXICO – This city grew up with the railroad, but for years its only train depot stood forsaken and empty, a broken monument to the region's past. The wood roof leaked, the windows were smashed, graffiti covered the walls.

Now residents are celebrating the depot's rescue, hoping that passengers will once again crowd its platform and that visitors and residents alike will stop by to learn about Tecate's history.

"I feel so proud to see this transformed," said Mario Baltierra López, a retired railroad worker who fought for years to keep vagrants and drug addicts out of the abandoned building.

Baltierra, who once lived at the depot with other railroad workers, was among a small crowd of residents and public officials who gathered Monday to celebrate the station's resurrection. The government of Baja California spent four months and $160,000 to rehabilitate the building, repairing the ticket counters, fixing the windows, roof and awnings, and painting the exterior a buttery yellow.

Groups on both sides of the border had long clamored to save the station, once a major stop on the 148-mile San Diego and Arizona Railway. Sugar magnate John D. Spreckels created the line to connect El Centro with San Diego. To save money, he built a 44-mile stretch through Mexico.

Though passenger service ended in the 1950s, the depot remained open until 1996, when it was closed by the Mexican federal government and rapidly deteriorated. Three years ago, the state was granted a 25-year concession over the rail line, plus the Tecate and Tijuana depots.

San Diego's Save Our Heritage Organisation, or SOHO, twice named the Tecate building to its list of endangered structures. In 2001, The Great American Station Foundation in New Mexico added it to its list of Most Endangered Stations, the only station outside U.S. territory included. "We've been fighting and fighting for 30 years, and now we've seen our dreams become a reality," said Jorge Ramírez López, founding president of Tecate's Historical Society.

The station was built sometime between 1914 and 1919. With wide windows, broad eaves and natural building materials, it is an important example of the Prairie-style architecture promoted by U.S. architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

"The history of urban Tecate begins with that station," said María Eugenia Castillo, a historic preservationist who specializes in Mexico's railroads at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte outside Tijuana.

The reopening is part of a plan to boost tourism and reintroduce passenger service between Tecate and Tijuana, said Jesús Torres Acevedo, director of Admicarga, the state agency that oversees the rail facilities.

Under an agreement with the state, the Lakeside-based Carrizo Gorge Railway runs freight trains on the track, bringing propane and lumber to Tijuana and delivering malt, barley and molasses to the Tecate Brewery.

The San Diego Railroad Museum, in conjunction with Carrizo Gorge, runs passenger trains between Campo and Tecate twice a month, dropping people off and picking them up at the station, which is tucked behind the brewery.

"Now it's clean and secure and more relaxing," said Gary Sweetwood, president of Carrizo Gorge. "They can sit here and get information about Tecate, then they can disperse and start enjoying the facilities in the town."

In its new incarnation, the building serves a combination of public functions: passenger terminal, tourist information center and historic museum.

At this week's opening, longtime residents looked back on the days when each train's arrival was a major event.

Constantino León Gutiérrez, a former mayor and the son and grandson of railroad workers, reminisced about the stationmaster, don Luis Jiménez Espinosa, who lived upstairs and wore dark suits.

Raul Peñalosa, a Tecate native and restaurant owner, was reared on stories about World War II, when train cars filled with U.S. troops passed through town.

"When my mother was young, she'd come here with all the girls to look at the soldiers, and offer them cigarettes and wish them luck."

Preservationists say that saving the station was a significant move. One of Mexico's newest states, Baja California has little physical evidence of its past, and Mexico's federal preservation laws take into account structures built after 1900 only on a limited basis.

Castillo, who campaigned to get the station restored, complained that many of the building's original features were altered during the repairs. "If you take a closer look, or are an expert in restoration, you might feel disappointed," she wrote in SOHO's newsletter earlier this year.

"The building's integrity was preserved as much as possible," said Julia Bendímez, who heads the Baja California office of Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History, which advised the state on the project. Some parts of the building had deteriorated, and had to be replaced, she said.

The victory is that the building has been saved from destruction, said SOHO director Bruce Coons. "It's got a roof on it, it's got people in it, and it still exists. We're glad that it's going to have a viable use again – it's a great building."